Author: Leandro Benda, PMP

In order to achieve the set objectives, it is essential to identify and manage the stakeholders of a project and do the team management with the right approach.

Stakeholder Management

Stakeholder management is a major challenge for the success of any project. This process is present throughout the project life cycle.

But what exactly is a stakeholder?

It is all the groups of people and all the people who have an interest in or are affected by the project in any way.

This flow starts in the initialization phase of the project with the identification of these people and concludes with the monitoring of their involvement, all the way through the planning and management of them.

Tools like brainstorming, stakeholder analysis, mapping, and meetings are key to the success of these tasks.

Key elements such as the approach, needs, influence and interest of these stakeholders are essential for this analysis.

The more stakeholders are involved, the more value they can bring to the project, support it, and increase the likelihood of achieving the goals set beforehand.

The risk of not performing these activities in an optimal way is that the stakeholders will oppose the project and consequently put the project at risk.

Team Management

The constitution, management, development and monitoring of the project team are equally important factors in maximizing the chances of success of the project.

At the beginning of a project, the project manager is often faced with a heterogeneous set of people. The task and challenge of the project manager is to weld this primary team together to form a developed and committed project team.

In order to carry out these processes in the best possible way, the project manager must have strong skills in negotiation, conflict management, listening skills, empathy, delegation, communication, integrated vision and teamwork.

The availability of resources, especially in matrix project organizations, is critical. Ensuring this throughout the project is essential because it can delay or even cause the project to fail, especially since the priority level of the project can change at any time in the various organizations.

It is common for changes to occur during the project lifecycle, managing these changes can be tricky. The project manager has a key role to play in this process with the team and stakeholders in order to find the best possible compromises, and also to maintain credibility with the team.

Project teams can have different levels of maturity and autonomy, so the project manager will have to choose the right management style depending on whether he/she is result-oriented or relationship-oriented, as well as his/her desired level of involvement.

The compatibility of the management style with the team and the context will be decisive for the success of the project.

Given everyone is different and these areas are so close to the so called ‘soft skills’ we hope to engage you in our Open Space, to give you the opportunity to participate and share experiences. So whether you want to approach this from the classic PMP areas, or an Agile approach, (e.g. we’d love to hear from some new DASM/DASSMs given some of you have taken advantage of PMI Switzerland’s offers for these trainings),  you’ll be welcome at our Open Space. Furthermore, Open Spaces are also about learning this unconventional yet powerful facilitation format. Like last time, we’d also like to hear your ideas to fuel topics for further themes to these cyclical drop-in interactive events made by PMI Switzerland for you, around classic PMP or Agile PM topics. 

So join us on the 15th June, Tuesday at  6:30 - 8:00 p.m. (CET) and make sure you attend with 2-3 things (questions/issues) you would like to discuss on Stakeholder and Team Management. We trust you’ll come out with solutions, inspiration and connections. 

Sources:

• PMBOK® Guide - Sixth Edition 
• Book  “Gestion de projet - Les étapes vers le succès du projet”, Beat Guntern, Ute G. Blasche and Thierry Bonjour, 2020

Authors:

Florian Ivan

Isatu Barrie, PMP

Are you a seasoned project manager and want to share your experience with others?

Or are you less experienced and have questions you are looking for answers to?

Then our Community of Practice could be the right place for you.

What is a Community of Practice anyways?

Communities have been around for thousands of years and they’ve always been paramount to problem-solving and human evolution. People who share a problem or a passion for something get together regularly and learn how to do it better.

What’s in it for me?

Communities of practice are a great place to find pertinent answers quickly and solve issues in a matter of minutes. Most of our problems are not unique and chances are somebody has already dealt with the same problem and can provide some help.

Every discipline has its own depth, vocabulary, and culture. And jokes! A community of practice is a tribe where like-minded people network and exchange ideas. It is a great place to test ideas, get some peer review, and experiment. It’s real and it’s unbiased.

As corny as it sounds, true fulfillment comes with helping others. Community members feel proud and accomplished because of the help they provide hence making a direct impact in somebody’s life.

How you can help, are you asking?

Does all that sound great? Yes, it does but there’s a small investment needed to turn it into reality. For this, to work, everybody needs to contribute with their own experience, knowledge, expertise and most importantly, time! This investment can range from a couple of minutes to a few hours a week. It can be answering questions, solving problems, or simply just saying something comforting to someone who needs to hear something nice.

Help us help you!

We welcome your input. Please complete this short questionnaire to let us know what sort of information you will find beneficial.

Your opinion matters to us!

We are excited to hear your brilliant ideas. The survey will be open until August 20th. The result and the next step will be published in the September Newsletter. Thank you for your immense contribution.  We are looking forward to working with you on this initiative. 

Author: Geetanjali Bhat, PMP

Dear Members and Newsletter Subscribers!

It is that time of the year where we can see fresh flowers and greenery all around us, giving us  reasons to smile and cherish more. Today, sunshine and bright skies are giving us an important message about good days coming soon. Friends, I can see that good things are happening too bringing more positivity around us. I cannot think of any better example than we in PMI Switzerland about our continuous learning and inspiring each other. 

As I mentioned in my last editorial about the exciting events with latest subject’s expertise, this month, we bring in various Disciplined Agile Certification courses through sessions and online live workshops. PMI has also taken the initiative of providing Disciplined Agile courses specially for PMI Switzerland members too.

Friends, what are we waiting for! Let’s grab this opportunity to get ourselves agile certified.

While, we are in 21^st year in PMI Switzerland, today despite continued restricted access outside world, we from PMI community are continuously learning, innovating new ideas and sharing with the world. Friends, please remember there is always someone out there in our virtual coffee meets for a chat!  Let’s continue to discuss and network more in our virtual coffee meets, ensuring to turn this pandemic into a positive path of new innings of more growth in each one's learning journey.

I would like to thank PMI Switzerland community for creating innovative workshops and events and we continue to learn and inspire each of us in the community.

I wish every member of PMI community, Healthy and Safe days ahead. Let’s all think positive and keep learning and motivating each other in our PMI member journey!

Cheers!

Geetanjali

How to position yourself as a brand, how to (re-)launch your go-to-market strategy and many real-life examples. This is what we have learnt at the virtual PMI Master Class from the Digital, Social Media & Blockchain Pioneer German Ramirez. As a regular attendee of the PMI Master classes, I was not disappointed, neither by the speaker and his very entertaining approach nor by the topic.  

Here are some of the LinkedIn related takeaways which each of us can easily implement:

1. Think about yourself as a brand, define what you stand for and communicate it accordingly. 
2. If you are not a bot, then don’t behave as one. Personalize your messages and keep in touch with your network, not only when you need something from them. 
3. Be proactive in endorsing skills and giving recommendations. After that you can ask to receive some yourself.  
4. Balance out btw. what a search algorithm will detect and what would appeal to a human (“Pharma Project Manager” vs. “Pharma Project Manager joining forces with data analysts and molecular biologists to find a cure of XYZ disease”).

If you get inspired to “beef up” your LinkedIn profile yourself, you might want to check the speaker’s LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerramirez/